Rats and Cats

Art Speigelman gave himself a very hard job in trying to accurately convey the Holocaust to the best of his ability. The method he chose to represent his dad's story was through a graphic novel using animals as representations of different races. In both volumes of the graphic novel Maus, Art draws images for each title of the chapter. Many of these images include the representation of Jews as mice, but chapter three of volume 1 is one of the few chapters that showcase Art's representation of Nazis as cats. Closely analyzing the picture reveals two cats finding a mouse and presumably taking the mouse as a prisoner of war as written by the title. The mouse is actually Vladek, Art's father, but it showcases a larger theme of complete and total dominance by the Nazis over the Jews. No matter what the Jews could do to hide or run away to protect themselves, as the mouse is doing, the cats (Nazis) will always accomplish the hunt. Furthering the motif of complete domination, the cats are drawn larger and over the mouse, once again reverberating the idea that Nazis are superior to the worthless and weak mouses. Showing Vladek on the ground illustrates his complete helplessness and lack of resistance.

The propaganda photo shown conveniently connects quite well to not only this chapter, but the entire graphic novel. This poster conveys Jews as rats, a race that is considered as vermin. This is one of the reasons that Art drew Jews as mice, in my opinion. He wanted to show that all Jews were treated as if they were as worthless and insignificant as rats. Both the chapter cover and the poster show how Nazis discriminated against and persecuted the Jews. The only difference I can see is the lack of Nazi strength shown in the Nazi propaganda, but thinking about the poster in context reveals that Nazis mainly wanted to belittle Jews, not show bring themselves up over them. These two pieces effectively show the sad but true way Jews were treated in WWII by Nazi Germany.